Titus Andronicus

Today's presentations from your fellow students:

Titus

by Flora Anderson

Titus is Julie Taymor's 1999 adaptation of Titus Andronicus, the first feature film version of the play. Taymor is interested in physical theatre and masks, as well as puppetry. This comes through in the scene after Lavinia is raped, in which she is stylised into a tree, with twigs and sticks in her severed arms. She stands on a rotten tree stump, fitting in with the ruined and barren trees around her. In the previous scene the forest is lush and healthy, and this change after Lavinia has been 'deflowered' (sorry), seems to reflect the damage inflicted by the twisted sexuality emphasised in the film. We can see this, almost dangerous, sexuality strongly related to human influence. Saturnine's court is an overly decadent, extremely architecturally  aware space in contrast to the outside world. Bodies are draped naked around a swimming pool, indulging in the excess of the court, only for it to lead to violence when the court is attacked by Titus' army. 

The fact that the film was made in 1999 affects its approach to violence. The young Lucius appears at the beginning of the film in a scene which starts off as a seemingly innocent game turning into a violent outbreak in his kitchen. In many of the goriest scenes there is a shot of the young 20th century boy looking on, which questions our approach to violence, what does it say about our own tastes, and how we are affected by the violence in our own modern culture. This would not have been such a strong issue in contemporary Shakespearean times, as violence was much further integrated in the policy of the country e.g. public hangings. Chiron and Demetrius are strongly linked to our contemporary culture, playing arcade games and dressing in 90s fashion. I think this shows a very interested  approach to the nature of violence in our modern society in relation to Titus Andronicus, which is acutely relevant to many of the issues, such as American gun culture, that we think about today. 

Titus

by Alba Arnau Prado

I chose to watch the film adaptation Titus for Shakespeare’s play Titus Andronicus. Titus was directed by Julie Taymor and released in 1999. Some of the main actors are Anthony Hopkins as the main character Titus, Laura Fraser as his daughter Lavinia, Jessica Lange as Tamora and Harry Lennix as Aaron. The approach Taymor decided to take is to mix some elements from the play’s Rome and some elements more modern, so the result is that sometimes we see chariots and sometimes cars, some people are dressed very modernly - some resembling rock stars - and some others with armor. In the DVD commentary, Taymor explained her choice by saying that this mixture of past and present time represented the timeless of violence.

It is worth saying that this bizarre setting gives her the freedom to be very literal about some parts of the original play and these parts don’t look weird or out of place. The script is almost word for word Shakespeare’s play and few changes are done on the chronological order of the plot. Also, every time the play indicates the characters have to be ‘aloft’ they are in the film.

However, it’s in Lavinia when we find the more literal parts. It starts in the beginning when she has a little vase with her tears for her brother that she pours to the floor before her father’s feet. Then in the scene after her rape, when her uncle Marcus finds her, she is presented with twigs instead of hands in her arms as the monologue says: ‘Speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle hands| Hath lopped and hewed and made thy body bare| Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments|’ (Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare (1995: The Arden Shakespeare) p.188). It goes on with her opening her mouth and a flow of blood comes out as it is, too, described: ‘Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,| Like to a bubbling fountain stirred with wind| Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips!’ (1995: 188). This gives credibility to the dialogue, which does not seem out of place or forced because it is describing exactly what is happening in the scene.

Nonetheless, there are other times that are not so directly related to Lavinia that also reflect this take on literality. In the moment when the hand and the heads are returned to Titus, in the film they make an actual mockery of it with music and dance.